Nokia, Windows Phone and the Smartphone Battles

Back in August, Google announced that they are buying Motorola for $12.5billion. Great buy on Google’s part because it will somewhat help defend them in the patent issues they are currently facing with Android and OEMs using Android. Will this help $GOOG win the smart phone battle? Don’t know, but they are sure taking a large chunk of the market!

What does this mean for Windows Phone? Don’t know either, but they do have Nokia; which used to have the largest marketshare, on board to deliver Windows Phone based hardware. Unfortunately they have been steadily losing a very large chunk of their marketshare. Over a year ago I did write an article on whether Windows Phone will succeed, and over all I think it is doing pretty well considering it started from scratch again (Yes I’m optimistic ) but don’t think it has been fully successful yet.

Now will Nokia hardware help $MSFT get marketshare for Windows Phone? I think it will as it has a history of making some pretty sexy devices. The image here is supposedly of the Nokia 800 when it’s going to release this year (image courtesy of PocketNow)

Microsoft definitely has developers on board, but now it’s time to get consumers on board. Without consumers, developers have no customers and the ‘eco-system’ falls apart. Let’s hope Microsoft has something up their sleeves for Windows Phone in terms of marketing it to the consumer. Seeing things like the Windows Phone Klout Perk promotion is a step in the right direction. Get 500 phones in the hands of influential people, I’m pretty confident unless they are hardcore power users that want to be able to control every aspect of their phone, they will have something good to say about Windows Phone.

Let’s see what the next year brings. The battles are definitely heating up, the wallets are opening up and it’s time to win the consumers. It’s definitely game time for all major players involved including Apple, Microsoft, RIM and Google!